The Game

Hiring is one of the most confusing and challenging aspects of the IT industry. It’s a strange process — one where everyone seems to be playing by different rules. It’s like looking into a fractured mirror, where the full picture is never quite visible. From moments of confidence to unexpected rejections that leave you thinking, “Did I just get ghosted?” it’s a true emotional rollercoaster. So, is there a way to hack the game?

In “The Game,” Sergey shares insights from every side of hiring—interviewer, process designer, and applicant. This talk isn’t just about tips; it’s about understanding why the process feels like a maze and how knowing the “why” can give you clarity. You’ll leave with a new perspective and a few thoughts that might just make things click.

DX journey, from medieval to new age

We arrived from the future to share what is Developer Experience (DX) and why it is important. Walking through SDLC step by step and showing how DX looks like on each of the steps. Sharing tips, tools and why they are important, examples from real-life products.

(talk was given together with Ilya Karpovs)

Who is a Full-Stack Developer?

In the constantly evolving world of technology, there are many different roles and titles that make up the field of engineering. But among them all, there is one that seems to evade easy definition - the Full-Stack Engineer.

What exactly does it mean to be a Full-Stack Engineer? Is it a jack-of-all-trades, able to handle any task thrown their way? Or is it a title reserved for only the most elite and highly skilled engineers?

In this talk, we’ll take on the role of detective and set out to uncover the truth about Full-Stack Engineering. Using a combination of observations, assumptions, and careful conclusions, we’ll explore the various skills and responsibilities required to truly be a full-stack engineer in today’s tech industry.

(for this meetup talk was given in RU language)

Game: Designing an App Together!

It’s like System Design interview but much more fun and interesting! Gameified session during which app will be designed live, together with everyone in the room.

You will solve interesting challenges moving from level to level which grow in complexity.

Game shows how idea transforms from initial, just a thought into something sustainable before implementation.

It shows:

• Importance of having conversations between business and IT on early stages
• System evolution when requirements change, business scales
• Ideas from where to start implementation to make it faster to MVP
• And how fun it can be!

Trends in the IT

Soon it is the end of the year, so it is the perfect time to look at what is happening in the IT, what are the trends in the various areas.

Developer Experience: why it’s important

Big companies, popular Open Source projects understand that Developer Experience (DX) is the key to success. But what it is about? Can you already improve DX for your team, your product? This talk will answer the questions above and show where you can start improving DX tomorrow.

Game: Designing an App Together!

Interactive session during which one of the submitted project/program ideas were designed live, together with everyone in the room.

Game shows how idea transforms from initial, just a thought into something sustainable before implementation.

It shows:

• Importance of having conversations between business and IT on early stages
• System evolution when requirements change, business scales
• Ideas from where to start implementation to make it faster to MVP

Architectural Patterns

During this talk we will go through various architectural patterns looking at them through the Business Analyst prism.

After this talk you should feel yourself more confident on architectural meetings speaking with architects.

Intro to the Databases

During this session we will go through the world or the databases and try to find answers to the following:

• What databases exist
• Differences between relational and not relational (SQL vs NoSQL)
• Problems with terminology
• How to design your data (normalization vs denormalization)
• and other questions

Workshop: Dockerization

Hosted 7 internal Docker workshops.

Workshop: Intro to Go and Docker

Ever dreamed to try Go and Docker but haven’t got time for this? This is your chance!

During this workshop you will have hands-on experience writing application (web server and CLI app) in Go. Additionally we will get familiar with Docker. Finally you will see benefits of using these tools together and separately.

Interview Process From Scratch

Interviewing potential candidates is hard. It is even harder if you don’t have a proper interviewing process. And even harder if you are not a manager, but a software engineer. You start by using intuition and whatever you think is best. This approach might work, but it is too chaotic and will eventually fail.

Interviewing more than 200 potential candidates in a 5-month period is a lot. You will hear how interview process evolution was made from nothing to the process that works in terms of speed, scale, and quality.

And of course, you will learn some useful tips for resume-building and going to interviews, too!

Journey from OO language to Golang

“Wow, I have not thought about this” — told me one of the colleagues. Golang is a sobering language that refreshes your view on doing things. It shifted our mindset about the usual flow of application development and now there is no way back. During this talk speaker will share his experience of migrating from OOP style applications to the Golang. How view on doing things shifted through time and how it changed development. He will talk about success, struggle and mistakes. After this talk it will be easier for you to convince your friends/colleagues to move to the Golang.

Link to the blog post which was born from this talk.

From 0 to 100 in three months

Challenge: speed, scale & quality. Software engineer lost in the hiring process will share an interesting case study from which everyone can benefit and make the World a better place. The story of the hiring process evolution will be shared during which he interviewed more than 100 candidates.

Make Bots Great Again

You already heard about different tools and platform to create bots, like Hubot, Microsoft Bot Framework, you name it.

During the Google I/O there were interesting announcements about AI and specifically around Google Assistant, Actions on Google, and not so much about API.ai which can change the way how you think about bots. After this talk you will get the idea, how to create cool bots with API.ai, integrate them with Slack, Google Assistant, and other different services. And it will be served with live demo.

Discover the IT Universe

Lets explore the Universe of IT. Let’s see what it’s made of! We will start from the web, server-side, going toward clouds and talk how they are made and what are the challenges.

Then we will continue with discovery of our pocket devices, smart houses, embeddable devices (Internet of Things) and the Future (VR/AR, etc.)

Tensor Must Flow

During this talk we will figure out what is TensorFlow, how it works — key concepts and how it flow We will find out what is hidden behind the magic words — “Artificial Neural Network”. What additional tools you can use for visualisations and more stuff… If you are interested in machine learning (novice or advance), you will hear something new for you.

Workshop: Dockerization

This one you really do not want to miss. During this workshop all of you will have one common goal. Only together you will make an application successfully up and running.

You will write Dockerfiles, building images, configuring Docker Compose, even work with Docker Registry.

Be ready. It will be very active.

Workshop: Dockerization

This one you really do not want to miss. During this workshop all of you will have one common goal. Only together you will make an application successfully up and running.

You will write Dockerfiles, building images, configuring Docker Compose, even work with Docker Registry.

Be ready. It will be very active.

Docker in da House

Have you ever thought about minimalistic workspace? Without spending hours to install all needed things for successful development? You want to develop in “close to production” environment locally? And share this environment with other team members easily? You know what? It’s easy to do, especially when Docker comes in the house!

I will tell you a little what is Docker, how you can easily spin up NGINX + PHP + Database + Whatever (e.g. node, gulp, bower, ruby+sass, etc.) without installing ANY of these on your host system. Good practices, examples of real life use cases. All this accompanied with a live demo. Join the dark side, we have Docker :)